The Bank: Inside the Bank of England - Lothbury, London, UK
N 51° 30.883 W 000° 05.381
30U E 701928 N 5711081
The Bank of London is located in the City of London and has a museum that opens to the public.
Waymark Code: WMGCRZ
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/15/2013
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The book's description on the Amazon
website [visit
link] reads:
"The Bank of England is a uniquely
powerful, influential and secretive institution. The decisions which flow from
it affect everyone in Britain and many further afield. It is a hugely important
cog in the machinery of government, the City of London and the global financial
markets. The Bank s powers extend far beyond its month-by-month direction of
monetary policy to the oversight of financial institutions and to the wilder
shores of economic policy, including hundred-billion-pound schemes to prop up
Britain s ailing economy. This is the first inside account of the Bank, drawing
on interviews with senior current and former Bank staff, which sheds new light
on the Bank s role in the financial crisis, including Northern Rock, the banks
multi-billion-pound bailouts and disagreements with the Treasury over
Quantitative Easing. It describes Sir Mervyn King s idiosyncratic personal
history, his controversial role as Governor and the often strained relationships
he has with senior colleagues at the Bank, in Whitehall and Westminster. The
Bank is a superbly written and well-researched tale of King s strong,
controlling and often inflexible personality , of Machiavellianism at the heart
of Britain s central bank and and the extraordinary power that this most
secretive and remarkably autonomous institution wields. The book s publication
comes at a key moment in the Bank s history, as it assumes greater powers to
regulate banks and bankers, faces increasingly searching questions about its own
accountability and prepares to announce a successor to King in late 2012. Dan
Conaghan said: The Bank is the product of two and half years detailed research,
drawing in large part on interviews with Bank staff, past and present, as well
as with senior central bankers, financiers and politicians. They have revealed
an institution which has never been more powerful, nor more flawed, and at the
mercy of a highly complex and dictatorial
Governor."